David Pearsall Bushnell Notes transcribed from an interview with David Pearsall Bushnell and Nancy Bushnell, Oct. 29, 1999, by Richard Buchroeder and Peter Abrahams. (Questions from the interviewers in parentheses) I was born on March 31, 1913 in Minnesota. When I was a child, I sold newspapers. At age 16 I bought a new Chevrolet for $729., paying cash. (What was your passion back then?) Money. It was the depression. Cal Tech. 1930 to 1933, Einstein was on campus, but I did not meet him. I paid the tuition of $350. a year with my newspaper earnings. I was delivering papers in the morning in Los Angeles and driving to Pasadena every day. I decided to take a trip around the world I hitchhiked to New York, and spent three weeks walking the docks there, trying to get on a ship. One captain said, come down to the ship; they had a black crew, they were sailing to West Africa, the crew & their girlfirends were all there having a big party. The captain pointed to a big chest & said, you'll have to stay in that chest until the ship sails. That was enough of that. I bought a third class ticket to Europe for $82.50. I returned, back to San Francisco, and my folks met me. I was gone 8 months, the money had run out. I went to Sawyer's Business School, I signed up for the secretarial course. The first week was typing. The second week was shorthand. But after one day of that, I decided that was enough! I enrolled in a practical course at USC on foreign trade. I graduated cumme laude at USC, Bachelor of Science in Foreign Commerce, in 1936. I had some letterheads printed before I graduated. 'Pacific International Trade Limited,' and the officers were 4 or 5 of my classmates. After Pearl Harbor, I got a job at Lockheed Burbank, in their finance department. I was in charge of collections for commercial sales. I was well paid at Lockheed & it was interesting, I prepared papers for delivery of their planes, and got the pilot to collect on delivery in Nevada. Four years later, when I left, the officers wanted to invest their money in my new business. We did that for six months. They were going to supply sources of products for export, but they did not deliver. Finally I got disgusted, and gave them their money back. Right after the war, you could sell anything for which you could find a source. There were scarcities of everything. The Pacific Electric intercity rail system was closed & the rails were re-rolled into reinforcing bars, then sold to Hong Kong Harbor. I was to deliver the steel to Hong Kong personally. So I said, before I go to sea, I should have one of those things that travellers hang around their neck to look through. I didn't know what they were called. I wanted to be a world traveller. I went looking for one of these, and learned they were called binoculars. This was 1947. I was 34 when I discovered binoculars. I looked all over, you couldn't buy binoculars, because they had been given to the military during the war. I found a used pair of 6 x 30s at a pawn shop for $50., made by Universal Camera in Minneapolis. December 1947 to January 1948, was my first trip to Japan. So, off I went to the Orient, and while standing on the bow of the ship, watching the porpoises play, I was thinking that something wonderful was going to come out of this trip. I didn't know what it was going to be, but I had a gut feeling. We sailed into Manila Bay, going around the sunken ships, and in to the berth. I was standing on deck, and someone on the dock called out, 'do you want to sell those binoculars?' I said, 'sure', I didn't want them anyway after I got off the ship. He said, 'I'll give you a hundred dollars for them.' That was my first sale, and a profitable one. That shows how scarce binoculars were at that time. I delivered the steel and flew on to Shanghai. At Shanghai in the hotel, there was a Dutch trader who had just come back from Tokyo. He showed me the samples of products that he had bought there, and one was a nice 7 x 50 binocular. I asked him what he paid, and he said eighteen dollars. It was a military binocular converted to civilian use, and a good one. To get into Japan, I needed a permit from Washington. Fortunately I was able to get a permit, having traded with Japan before the war. I was one of the first commercial traders in Japan after the war. A couple of New York importers arrived shortly after my visit. We landed in Yokohama, and everything was flat all the way to Tokyo, bombed out. The only things left standing were a few chimneys. MacArthur was quite a character over there, we'd see him arrive & leave, with crowds around him, he was a real showman. I did not meet him. Later, I had to wait until MacArthur left Japan to make riflescopes. In Tokyo one building had an exhibition of all the products Japan had available for export, and there were the binoculars. I looked through several and they looked all right to me. I bought some samples and had them sent back to my office in Los Angeles. At that time, I had about six employees. They were busy exporting a lot of chemicals to China. I continued around the world. I flew on to Bangkok, and carried a little pair of 6 x 15s. I thought they were wonderful, that these were what the spies carried during the war. I was fascinated with them. The brand was Hercules, made by Asahi Optical. This was before Asahi made the single lens reflex camera. In Germany, they were coming out from under the rubble, living down there. You couldn't imagine everything flattened. They just cleaned up enough in the roads that you could go through. And in London, damage was all around St. Pauls, it was flat! So I got back to Pasadena, and they had taken some orders from dealers for binoculars, based on the samples. About 400 pair of binoculars were sold. The first binoculars we imported were Asahi 6x15, open frame, pocket binoculars. This was in '48, but there was a long strike by the steamers, which lasted for months, and we couldn't get them off the ship. So the dealers cancelled their orders. After Christmas, they said you couldn't sell Japanese products, the stigma was too strong, and the French will be back, and eventually the Germans as well. The merchants thought they could not sell the Japanese products. Late in December, I was able to get them off the ship, in time for the Santa Anita race track to open. I put an ad in the Los Angeles Times, 7 x 50s for $49.50. I wrote my own advertising. Then came my first ads in the American Rifleman, especially the 4" ad featuring the 8x30 for $30 which started the whole mailorder business. In Pasadena, I bought a small building at 41 Green St., right across from the old Green Hotel, but the building is no longer there. I opened a retail store in front of the building and had merchandise inventory in the back. It was solely a retail business. After I sold the original 400 pair, I ordered more and sold them. Another secretary said, 'why don't you put your name on the binoculars?' I said, 'I don't know how long it's going to last, and there's many other products for us besides binoculars.' But with the next lot, I told Asahi Optical to put 'Bushnell' on the cover plate, and I drew a nice little lens, a cutaway of an achromat, and put 'Triple tested' on it. One customer asked, 'what does triple tested mean?' I said, it is tested by the factory, it is tested by us, and it is tested by you. We did test a few of each shipment. Asahi was run by very good people. I knew Mr. Matsumoto, the chairman. Every time I came over to Japan, he was out in the yard looking through a camera with a hood over his head. The first time, he said, look down in that ground glass. Another time, he said, 'Now look, you can look straight through here, you don't have to look down, we use a pentaprism.' We had lunch, and he said, 'We've got to think of a name for this camera.' We were coming up with all kinds names for the camera, Cyclops & others. He thought of Pentax, and we said, that's it! Later on, in 1979, when Nancy & I visited Japan, we visited his widow, he had just died. In a big villa there in Tokyo,she told Nancy, 'Sometimes what we had for dinner that night depended on an order from your husband.' For these early orders, we advertised on radio and I still have a record of the ads. When I saw there was a market here, in 1950, I talked with the sportcasters, Tom Harmon & others, and asked what they wanted as an ideal binocular. They said, wide field, light weight, and reasonable price. I also corresponded with the shooting editors of outdoor magazines and they gave me their input. Then I went to Germany, in 1949 or 1950, and called on Hertel & Reuss, Leitz, and Beck Kassell. They said 'Mr. Bushnell, we were making binoculars before you were born. We will make what we feel the market wants.' I took the next plane to Tokyo, which went through Moscow and across Siberia to Tokyo. The flight across Siberia in the winter was really something, especially with those noisy airplanes. The stewardess, instead of passing out food and drinks, was tightening the fasteners in the plane! We landed in Tokyo. The engineer said, 'Tell us what you want, anything you want.' So in two or three weeks, they had a prototype made. Day & night they'd work. The first one was a 7 x 35, a Japanese design with an aluminum body, it turned out well & started us off. My vision was that everyone in the Rose Bowl on New Year's Day should have a Bushnell binocular. The Rose Bowl Commission always bought a hundred binoculars, paid for them, and gave me 6 seats on the 50 yard line. They thought I was doing them a favor! We engraved them, 'Rose Bowl Participant.' But first, before I moved to Pasadena, I saw these people coming to the office & buying binoculars. A neighbor in the office building who was an advertising representative for Sports Afield magazine said, 'David, you've got to advertise in our magazine. It will cost around $800., it will appear just once, and it will take two months before it appears. It costs $200 to make the plate, and then you've got the artwork.' I asked, 'All of that, just to appear once?' He said, 'Trust me'. So we put a four inch ad in Sports Afield, offering 8 x 30s for $30. After that, those checks came in every mail. We had to add 20 percent luxury tax, which I didn't have to pay until the end of the year, so I had that 20 percent capital to use during the year, plus the profit. The luxury tax was a war time tax that survived for a long time. It was on furs, binoculars, jewelry, and other things. We billed the binocular cases separately, because that didn't require luxury tax, and that saved the customer a dollar or two. That was my first experience in mail order. Then we began to get inquiries from dealers, and there wasn't enough margin to sell through dealers, so I raised the prices. I began to sell through dealers, but continued to sell directly to the consumer. At one time, I had a separate product line for dealers, not the Bushnell name, but that didn't go at all, they wanted the name. American Rifleman was my best advertising medium. Later, I set up Aries Agency (because I'm an Aries), instead of paying 15 percent to an advertising agency. We wrote all our own ads & pocketed the commission. At that time I had about a dozen corporations because the first $25,000 earned by the corporation was assessed a lower tax rate. I had a company that bought binoculars, a company that shipped binoculars, that inspected binoculars, retail, wholesale; and the U.S. Optical Laboratory - the inspection & further guarantee outfit, that gave us the seal of approval. Before long, someone who had read an article in American Rifleman about coated lenses, asked us about them. I inquired around & found a fellow in Hollywood who was coating lenses for the movie makers, and for a while we would bring the binoculars to him & he would coat the inside of the objectives only, so we could use the term 'coated optics'. The Bushnell testing lab was always in our own building, never separate. We would repair & test there. Warranty service was provided here, we brought over a person from Tamron to work in our lab, Mr. Sato. After I sold to B & L, he went into business for himself, Oriental Optical Company on Walnut St. in Pasadena, where he still has a repair shop. He made a deal with B & L to repair for them. Quality was maintained because they took pride in their products, and never tried to slip one through. We would send back an occasional shipment, if defective, and if we couldn't repair them. If we had the time & the technicians, we would fix them. If it would cost too much, we would sent them back, and they were always good for them - if they wanted another order. I always had a retail store, in Pasadena. Later on, in 1959, we built a new building in East Pasadena, on Foothill Boulevard, which is gone now. The second trip to Japan was in spring of 1952. The third was in 1954. The fourth was in 1956. I'd go to Japan, sit in a hotel room, and they'd be lining up in the lobby. I'd give them about 15 minutes each, and one after the other would come in. I would visit all the plants. Some were Mom & Pop operations, but they wouldn't complete the binocular, they'd be making prisms or eyecups, bodies & so forth; and they'd be assembled by another firm. We would say, 'can you try a certain field of view', and they would say, 'how about this?' They would try to do anything we asked them to. For example, the birders wanted close focus. We never had a model that we had to liquidate; if it didn't sell very well, we'd at least sell our inventory. We never set a minimum. It was all gentlemen's agreement, they trusted us & we trusted them. Running the business was always fun, I couldn't wait to get down to the office to see what cables had arrived, I'd even go down Saturdays & Sundays. One lady sent a binocular back to us and said, 'for heavens sake, please fix these in a hurry & get them back to my husband, he's a dedicated birder, he specializes in golden crested double breasted mattress thrashers'. It was fun to see the thing grow, to make people happy & get letters back, I've got files full of them, from prominent people. I was thinking binoculars and only binoculars, how to improve them, 24 hours a day. In 1971, we were selling 10 million a year. I sold the company in 1972. When I walked out, I said, 'Gee, I don't even have to turn out the lights.' I took stock from Bausch & Lomb and gradually sold it off. Then the Bushnell portion of B & L was sold to a Malaysian group, 4 or 5 years ago, and this year it was resold to an American company. (After selling the company, Bushnell was involved in a variety of investments and volunteer activities, remaining very active, making his first sky-diving parachute jump at 90 years. David Bushnell died at 91 years of age, in March 2005.) ------------------------ --Notes on Companies The Canadian branch of Bushnell Co. sold the same models. Fuji was a little more formal. They had an early vacuum tube computer that filled a whole room. I also remember seeing rooms full of girls using an abacus to calculate lenses. One story that was told to me in Japan was that the Germans had taught the Japanese how to make optical glass during or after the first World War. I think it was Fuji Optical, because they made their own glass. I asked them what influence the Germans had during the second World War on the war material and they said practically none. S. Kobayashi was later the Chairman of Fuji Film (Fuji Photo Optical, a subsidiary of Fuji Film). Tony Kobayashi was the son of the chairman of Fuji, and is now chairman of Fuji Xerox Tamron is an interesting story. Mr. Arai and I would go around and around, negotiating price & features on the binoculars. For rifle scopes, Al Akin came up with the 'Command Post', you move a little external lever by the lens cap, and throw a post up against the cross hairs. I went to Tamron & asked them to include this feature. Instead, next week he came up with his own idea of using a magnet, for a better seal. I rushed to the patent office to make sure our idea was registered, and he rushed to the patent office to get his magnet registered. We would go on and on like this. Fortunately, we controlled the marketing advantage as the Bushnell brand was firmly established by then. Tamron also made binoculars sold under other labels. There was only one firm with which we had a written contract, Kowa, and it was at their insistence. They made very good binoculars and riflescopes. Mr. A. Narimatsu was their engineer, who designed a 6 x 20 from the Sard design, with a Leman prism, made by Kowa. The designer at Kowa was very good & very cooperative. We used to supply eyepieces for Questar, we would buy them - probably from Kowa. O.T.A. was a small company founded & built by Hisasi Yamasaki, who earlier was (Bushnell's) agent. (This is likely a mistake in transcription; referring to O.T.C., Oriental Trading Company Ltd.) The Haking Wang company, in Hong Kong, used the 'Helena' brand, and made some Bushnell binoculars. They were the largest camera maker in the world for a time. Enshu was a binocular supplier circa 1968-72. BT was Tamron. BK was Kowa. I forget what Fuji was. Some models did not have marks. The manufacturers put the mark on them, at our request. The mark BOL on a binocular was for one factory, but I can't remember which. Japanese binoculars from Tasco and Swift started coming in the 1960s. We were very friendly with Swift. Tasco, I only met Mr. Rosenfield or Greenfield? once or twice at a trade show. It is possible that some of their models were the same as some of ours; except the Custom design, we patented the Custom Design, a design patent. (Q. When you put in an order to the Japanese, did you pay in advance? If it didn't sell, whose problem was it?) No, we used a letter of credit, and they were paid whether it sold or not. I don't know if it is still done that way. ------------------------ --Notes on Products The Rangemaster. There is one by Fuji and the later one by Tamron, the slope shoulder model. Either we weren't buying enough from Fuji or some other reason, I think it was the quantity that was a problem. The Rangemaster was not based on any previous design. It was just the best they could produce. We always told them that they should make the best they could produce, and we would pay for it. That was the difference between our purchases and the other companies that went over there, they tried to get the cheapest. (Q: Was the Rangemaster used by the military in Vietnam, as claimed in Bushnell ads?) I was aware only that the counter-intelligence people in Vietnam used them, and they only bought them in small quantities, 50 or 100. The Custom was our top of the line binocular. The Ensign was the inexpensive line. The differences were that they were made by different companies. For the lower price, you usually got a few deficiencies in the quality. Our sales were about 50-50 riflescopes & binoculars. Hunters were the biggest customers of binoculars. We had no detailed drawings of their binoculars, so there is no Bushnell archive of the details. Al Akin would always take instruments apart to come up with ideas to change and improve them. We did not set specifications on binoculars, and would sell any useful model. Most of our earliest models were the Zeiss body style, the B & L body style was adopted by our Japanese makers, but we liked the design, it was more stable. Bodies went from aluminum to magnesium over time. The telescopes were just bought off the shelf over there. John Diebel of Meade bought his first telescope from me, a used model with a dented tube. We are friends with him, his wife is from the Towa family. I was continually offered other products, such as hunting knives, but I always said no & wanted to stay in our niche. I could possibly have had the Pentax camera if I'd been interested in photography, but I didn't know the photography business & was too busy. ------------------------ --Personnel Our first head technician was Bill Levin, an excellent repair technician. Later, Al Akin was head technician, he had worked in optics before. He came from Frankford Arsenal & knocked on our door. He was with us 25 years or so. He was a very quiet individual, a Mormon, and everybody liked Al. He did not contribute to the design of Bushnell binoculars, it all came from Japan except the Custom Compact & the Instafocus. But he would come up with ideas and small improvements. He invented the rocker focus, the Quik Focus. But all the optical design was done by the Japanese. Lloyd Glidewell, repair technician, came to Bushnell from the US Navy opticalman service. After a fire at the shop, Lloyd built working models from damaged parts. Paul McGuire was the design engineer of the 7 x 35 prototype that we sent to Japan with a request to make such a binocular, which became the Custom model, the first model of our own design. He also did the Custom Compact. This would have been close to 1960. We used him from time to time, but he was not on our staff. Later on he worked for Tamron, designing their aspherical lens housing. George Roosevelt, wrote ad copy through 1950s. My secretary, Marge Ludwig, was the most important employee in the organization. She & I ran the whole import / export department (Q: Your name on a patent is an attribution for business purposes? Your name is on a patent for a binocular with high power on one side & low power on the other, what was that for?) Yes, for business reasons. Could that model have been the Bino-Photo? --------------- 2 November 2005. http://home.europa.com/~telscope/bushnell.doc http://home.europa.com/~telscope/bushnell.txt home page: http://home.europa.com/~telscope/binotele.htm